


The Lady's Knight

by LazyWriterGirl



Series: LWG's FE Femslash Week 2018 [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, Knight and Lady Dynamic, Maribelle's Dad Was Up To Stuff, Not A Happy Ending, Not Necessarily Anyway, Prompt: Fate, Secret Relationship, Spot the Background Femslash Rarepair, This Was Originally Going to Be Longer But I Got Upset About Something, Tumblr: fefemslashweek, fefemslashweek2018, just go with it, rarepair hell, welcome to my house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LazyWriterGirl/pseuds/LazyWriterGirl
Summary: For FeFemslashWeek 2018 on Tumblr, because I have to start writing again and as people can tell this is my most comfortable fandom.A lady, a knight, and a liaison most dangerous.Prompts: Fate/Chivalry/Freedom





	The Lady's Knight

**Author's Note:**

> And after HALF A YEAR of absence I have returned. Come, partake of my mediocrity once again, friends!
> 
> As per usual, I do not own the characters, nor the world found in Fire Emblem: Awakening. All I have are my words, such as they are.

The Ylissean Exalt’s godchild survives an assassination attempt that claims her parents and three younger siblings, and when she comes to live at the palace it is just Cherche's luck that she is chosen as the newcomer’s guard. The young duchess is a firebrand underneath her ladylike demeanour. Cherche thinks she might appreciate it more were it not directed at the opposition of her position.

“I do not need her, Godfather," says the prim little duchess during a family discussion. They have them often, by request of the Exalt himself. To help him understand their points of view, and how they think Ylisse can be improved, strengthened, refined, supposedly. Cherche personally thinks it foolish to isolate all the possible heirs to the throne in a closed off room, but that isn’t her decision to make. “Would the good knight not be better used protecting your heirs?”

The Exalt puts up a hand, imperious as ever. In the three years that she’s been here, he’s always come off as the kind of man for whom one must stand on ceremony. Cherche can’t say it’s a bad thing; the current ruler of her homeland is little more than a silly young man of one-and-twenty, younger than herself by a number of years. She’s been permanently relocated to Ylisse because the had thought, inexplicably, that a knight would be a good engagement gift for his future wife—the future Exalt herself.

Never mind that such talks had failed __spectacularly__  when the heir of Ylisse accepted the Feroxi East-Khan’s proposal last year.

Cherche smothers a smile behind a polite cough. The offered alliance had been of too great a value for the current Exalt to outright refuse the Lioness of the East. That his daughter could have possibly chosen such an…atypical…marriage still seemed surprising to most, particularly in the city, but Cherche has been the crown princess’s friend ever since arriving in Plegia. She’s seen the way the young woman watches the women of the court. Considering where she’d been raised, Cherche finds it boggling that other nations are not as accepting of such relationships as hers has always been.

Still, Cherche cannot say she would rather be in Roseanne. The people of Ylisse have taken a while to warm, but she is treated as one of their own for the most part. And the Exalt has placed his trust in her.

“Maribelle, my dear, I am only concerned for your well-being. You are all that remains of my dear friend the duke’s family, and as such, you will accept Cherche as your guard, else you will accept that you  are not allowed to leave this palace.”

The duchess’s sharp eyes sweep from the table to her godfather, then to Cherche. Her assent comes as a resigned sigh and a dip of her head, though her eyes are harder than steel. Cherche tries not to match the sigh with one of her own. Of course the orphaned duchess would have the most difficult temperament of the royal family.

“I trust you will do everything in your power to keep her safe,” says the king, the strange hue of his eyes reflecting the sunlight above.

“Yes, milord.”

The Exalt nods at her once. When they are dismissed, she waits for the duchess to sweep from the room before making her exit, a dutiful three steps behind. The tension in the noblewoman’s body is nearly palpable, but Cherche takes her duties seriously. She knows the truth about who the Duke of Themis had been; knows, perhaps a little more than she should, about the duchess's abilities. Still, whether the duchess wants her around or not is, frankly, completely irrelevant.

 

***

 

Maribelle isn’t stupid, and she certainly isn’t defenseless, but of course her godfather would insist on treating her as both these things. She knows that as the last heir to her father’s line, her continued survival is important. Without the secrets of her father’s order, Ylisse would be left without their best-kept secrets. The Exalt will not let her die, if only for the fact that she is the last person to hold such secrets.

That still doesn’t mean she needs some woman walking around behind her at all hours.

The Rosannean knight is surprisingly light on her feet for someone with such bulky armor strapped to her body. Granted, it isn’t the most demure outfit Maribelle has ever seen, not by far, but she would have expected __some__ noise. All she can hear is the soft thud of the knight's footfalls. It’s unnerving, to say the least. “You may as well show yourself, lady knight.”

“I was not of the mind that I was concealing myself, milady.”

Maribelle turns a little more sharply than she intends. This woman just gets on her nerves. The knight's hands reach out for her __elbows__ of all places, securing her just as she realizes that she’s stepped on the floor-length skirt her handmaiden had fastidiously folded and pressed just this morning. When she rights herself, the knight lets go, gently. She’s very tall, with a face that Maribelle can only think is unflinchingly beautiful, if not difficult to place, age-wise. She doesn’t know why her stomach flips a little at the way the knight watches her, but it does.

“I have no need for a bodyguard.”

The knight inclines her head. “That may well be, milady, but you have one in me.” Maribelle must make a disgruntled face, as the other woman—how old __is__ she anyway—tuts, the language of the continent tongue lilting off her mouth in a way that sounds unique to her. “Come now, milady. Should you wish it, you shall not need to see me. I __can__ concealing myself fairly well without risking your safety.”

Shadowed. That’s what she would be, what the knight is offering. She hates the idea of that. Her own parents had never insisted on a guard—though perhaps, given her father’s position, she had always had one. Maribelle resists the urge to sigh and shake her head. She’s supposed to be doffing such poor habits, supposed to be acting as a good example to Lissa. “I have no need for a second shadow. If you must, walk alongside me.” She opens her eyes, levelling the knight's steady gaze with her own. “You will endeavour to keep from getting in my way.”

The knight considers her for a moment. Maribelle wonders briefly if there’s something on her face. She doesn’t know why she should care what the woman thinks, but she does. How strange. “As you wish, milady.” There’s something in the other woman’s eyes, something curious. “Would you prefer me to keep my weaponry hidden?” Her hand falls to her hip and Maribelle can see the handle of a large silver axe holstered there. The shadow of a sheathed knife rests on the woman’s other thigh, and there's a hilt of something peeking out from a curtain of rosy hair.

“As you’d like,” she says. “You are the guard, lady knight. I don’t presume to know how you might best conduct your duty. Just don’t go waving those things about like a barbarian.”

The knight only smirks at that, and yet despite her annoyance, Maribelle thinks she might actually come not to mind the woman’s presence. She can’t say why, of course, but that isn’t really a concern. So long as the knight stays out of her way, they shouldn’t have any problems.

Now, it’s time for tea with Lissa.

 

***

 

Days become weeks, which in turn become months, and soon Cherche is accustomed to the eccentricities of her charge. The duchess is a character, in truth, so far removed from the dour image of her that Cherche had held before. It comes to the point where sometimes, though she admits it only very quietly to herself, in her innermost thoughts, that she would like to get to know her liege more closely. To develop a friendship such as the one she shares with the Exalt’s daughters, if not one of more closeness.

 

Such thoughts are accompanied by self-chastisement, of course; the duchess is her liege and nothing more.

 

Or so she thinks, until the day when everything shifts.

“Milady, should you not prepare to sleep soon? You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow.” To afford her liege her privacy, Cherche stands behind the panelled wooden divider that protects Maribelle from prying eyes.

“You say much the same every night, and yet each day comes and goes in much the same fashion as that which it precedes.” The lift in the duchess’s voice signifies a half-hearted jest, and Cherche curses the fluttering of birds' wings against her ribcage. She’d known, of course, of the rigidity of royal life, but compared to Cherche's previous lord, the duchess’s schedule has no allowance for frivolity. It makes her wonder what sort of habits the younger woman might have. She’s never seen her do anything for her own pleasure, the days spent in meetings with the local magistrates, with studying, with regular visits with the younger princess. “You are still there, yes?”

Stifling her staccato heartbeat, she says, “Yes, milady.” Then, trying for a lighter tone, “At the very least, tomorrow should prove exciting. You are to meet a new suitor.”

An aggravated sigh is the princess’s only response. Cherche almost laughs. The suitors the Exalt is suddenly pushing onto his god-daughter are meant to serve precisely one purpose, and they both know what that is. “Come now, milady, surely you will meet someone you like in time.” Or at least someone she can stomach for long enough to produce an heir to the Shadow Blades of Ylisse.

“I doubt my esteemed godfather would know the kind of suitor to send me should he wish for my happiness, lady knight.” Not for the first time, Cherche feels a kernel of __something__  in her chest. She’s never quite been able to pinpoint it, but it has been an occurrence of some regularity. Espeically when it feels as though the duchess just might be… “Come now, lady knight, no blithe remarks for me?” The duchess’s dry tone is laced with amusement.

“Please, milady, call me by my name.”

There’s a pause filled with something, something heavy and unidentifiable. Then, “I suppose that would be fine…Cherche.” Her name sounds so lovely in that moment. Before she can reply, the duchess steps out from behind the divider, hair still in its perfect ringlets. Her sharp eyes glow almost orange in the light. There’s a specific name for their colour,but Cherche can’t quite recall it as the princess looks at her. Unreadable. Remembering her manners, Cherche drops her gaze from her liege’s eyes, cursing inwardly as she takes in the nightgown wrapped around the duchess’s body.  _ _Decidedly__ less conservative than her everyday fashions. “I have one condition before I shall grant your request with regularity.”

“I am yours to command, milady.”

The laughter that issues from the duchess’s mouth sounds almost like a challenge, and Cherche’s feels a twinge below her stomach. Indecent and certainly punishable should her liege ever find out. “We shall see about that in time. But for now I’ll keep it simple. Look at me.” And Cherche does, shuddering as she lifts her eyes. She cannot refuse a direct order, but she’s afraid of what her liege might see. “I shall call you by your name, if you call me by mine.”

“But milady I—

“Cherche, please.”

There’s a plea in the duchess’s voice, and suddenly Cherche’s understands. “I shall do as you ask, Maribelle.”

The duchess—no, __Maribelle__ —smiles. “I __so__  hoped you would.”

 

***

 

Maribelle supposes it is no miracle when it happens. After all, she’d been hoping __something__ would. Still, the idea of getting caught, once so enticing, now genuinely frightens her. She knows __why__ , but certainly it can’t actually be why. She hasn’t got the freedom to choose for it to be why.

She has a duty to Ylisse and Themis, to the Shadow Blades, and Cherche is __not__ a part of that but...

Regardless, Maribelle isn’t surprised that Cherche ends up in her bed so much as she’s surprised that she wants to keep her there. It isn’t simply that the older woman is the best of the lovers she’s taken--and she has taken more than she thinks anyone might guess. When they are together, no matter the situation, Cherche proves time and again the beauty of her manners, the chivalry of her spirit.

And Maribelle adores her for it.

“Can’t you stay with me tonight?” She sounds so needy. She isn’t like this with her lovers, never has been before. Has never felt for a lover what she has for Cherche. “Please?”

“You know I cannot, darling.” Cherche’s presses a kiss to her lips, chaste after a night of being anything but. “I take the greatest risk each night I share your bed.” The older woman presses another kiss, this time to the line of Maribelle’s wrist. “I should be guarding you as a proper knight of the Exalt would.”

“You are __my__  knight.” Voice dripping with the heady heat of possession, she adds, “Mine and no one else’s.”

The moonlight brightens the smile on Cherche’s face. “And that is all the more reason why I must keep you safe.”

Cherche’s lips touch her skin one last time, and then she’s standing, donning her armour as if she were alone. Maribelle holds the silken sheets against her naked frame as she watches her lover prepare. This cannot be what she fears it is. What she knows it is. It simply cannot be. She is ready to tell herself, ready to remind herself that this cannot be what she thinks it is.

But then Cherche turns to face her, lips curved in the smile that Maribelle has come to see as hers and hers alone, and she knows. Despite herself, despite every dark thing she has come to believe of the world since her family’s passing, she can deny it no longer. The way that this woman makes her feel, as if she is the only person who matters…it’s precious. It’s terrifying to admit. She isn’t supposed to feel this way. Not about anything. Not about anyone.

But she feels the way she feels, and she knows what this is. Love is a liability, but… “Do you love me, Cherche?”

Cherche pauses, almost finished in her preparations. She turns to Maribelle again, and Maribelle can feel the breath catching in her throat. “With your training, you will know if I lie to you, wont you?”

The anger that rises up behind her eyes is burning, burning, and she clutches the sheets tighter in her hands. “I will.”

Cherche’s smile is brighter than the pure silver of the moon. She kneels gently, armored knees barely making a sound when they hit the frame of Maribelle’s bed. “Then it is good that I needn’t lie when I say that I love you. Far more than I should. Far more than I would have thought possible.”

Maribelle kisses her then, the sheets that cover her falling away. Cherche pulls away slowly, reluctantly.

“You are so beautiful, __my__  lady.”

And Maribelle knows that she belongs to Cherche as much as Cherche belongs to her. “I am yours. And you are mine, Cherche.”

“I am. You are my liege, my love, my life.” Cherche’s voice drops into a whisper so soft that Maribelle strains to hear it. “Je t'aime plus que tout au monde.”

 

***

 

She knows she has been foolish, knows she has been far, far too bold. Her love for Maribelle has filled her soul, and while the king has yet to come to her, she is afraid every moment. Maribelle is bold too, perhaps even more so than she. Each day Cherche worries that they will be caught, but she cannot stop herself. Her lady pulls her in without words, a goddess to a zealous acolyte.

Cherche can do nothing but worship her.

She knows that the king would have her head if he knew, but she cannot bring herself to care. Maribelle’s love is all-consuming, maddening in some ways, and yet she craves the feel of the duchess’s hands along her skin. When they are in public, when they are in the eyes of their world, she aches to touch the milky skin beneath the collars and lace of which Ylissean nobles are so fond. Aches to feel the woman beneath her, skin sleek from exertion, neck bared in wanton trust.

 

“Nobody will find us out, my love,” says Maribelle in her ear. These are the moments she loves the most, when she has her duchess tucked into her body, the two of them sated and warm. “How could they? You are so careful. And I have been diligent.”

Using Shadow Blade tactics to hide the trails of their affair is clever, and of course no less than what Cherche would expect from her brilliant lover. The duchess is so much more than she seems, so much more than the Exalt has made her out to be. Sighing, she turns, placing a kiss on the younger woman’s hair. “I must go now, darling.” She must return to her post outside the princess’s door soon. The two guards who come to supplement her defences each night are kind boys, but boys have loose tongues. It is in everyone’s best interests that she never sleeps at Maribelle’s side.

“It is most unjust that Emmeryn should marry the woman she wants, while I cannot have the one I love without hiding.”

“Such is life, my dearest heart,”” she says. “I cannot offer you what the East-Khan can offer the princess. By comparison, I cannot give you anything at all of value.”

“You have given me yourself. That is enough,” says Maribelle. The sincerity underneath her bluntness is touching.

Cherche moves to stand. She must be leaving soon. This is getting too dangerous, but she cannot give Maribelle up now. She won’t, she knows that, but she cannot continue to put them at risk with such cavalier disregard for the rules. She has to be careful. __They__  have to be careful. To make it appear as if they are nothing more than a lady and her knight.

They’ll have to talk about it in the morning, addled as they are by the glow in which they find themselves. Cherche must hold to her resolve. She must be steadfast, and she must ask that Maribelle be the same. Enough of this foolishness. She does not have the freedom to choose the life she wants. She must stand strong in the face of this temptation.

 

“Stay with me tonight.”

 

And with four words she comes undone.

 

***

 

Maribelle watches the guards pull Cherche from the doorway, horror worming its way into the quiet spots in her mind until all she can see is the firm line of Cherche’s mouth. The woman does not cry out though the guards are rough, rougher than they have reason to be, and she opens her mouth to command their hostility down before she realizes she cannot speak. Her godfather stands in the doorway, a finger pointed to her throat.

“You have nothing to say for yourself, my dearest godchild? The Rosannean has clearly proven that my trust in her was misplaced.” The claws of his hands grab Cherche by the chin, and he laughs, the darkness of a man who would slaughter the innocent coming to the fore. “I suppose I cannot blame you, child. A face like this has caused the downfall of many a great man. How could I expect any better of you?”

“Godfather, __please.__ ” She has never begged before him, never cowered as she does now. For Cherche, she would do anything, would throw away the pride her mother had bred into her, the dignity her father’s stoic eyes had always strived to instil in her. “Do not harm her.”

“I don’t believe you are in any sort of position to make demands of me. Now get dressed. You __will__ marry one of the suitors I have chosen for you. Clearly, this deviance must be corrected.” He looks to his guards. “Take the traitor to the hill. Three days with no food or water.”

The hill. The final resting place before an execution, a sick inside joke crafted by an ancestor of Ylisse.

“Godfather, no!” Maribelle throws a hand over her half-exposed chest, not caring that the guards are staring at her openly. The world is spiralling around her, and she feels magic—how long has she kept it locked away?—bubbling beneath her skin. She could kill the guards, could free Cherche. Perhaps the two of them would stand a cha—

“Your Majesty, please, my lady is not to bear the blame for my transgressions,” Cherche says. She sounds recalcitrant, but Maribelle can hear the quiet steel in her voice. “I understand the punishment for treason is death. I ask only that you give me one more night to be amongst the sky and stars that have become my home.”

The Exalt’s eyes narrow, and Mribelle holds her breath, prepared to loose a bolt of lightning or a tongue of flame should she have no other option.She has not practiced with anima of any kind in  quite some time, but surely she will remember. They will most likely die, but at the very least— “Very well then. One more night. You can spend it on the hill, shackled to a post.”

Cherche bows her head, though her eyes flicker toward Maribelle. There’s something there, an apology that she does not deserve, and she tries to look away before she does something that will bring more harm to the both of them. Under her breath, so softly that no one but Maribelle can hear, the woman whispers.

“Je t’aime.”

“I love you,” she says immediately, uncaring that they have an audience. “And I will find my way to you, Cherche, no matter what happens.”

She doesn’t know why she would say such a thing.

Or maybe she knows __exactly__ what’s to come.

 

The next morning, Maribelle stands on a parapet facing the hill. She’s made an agreement with the Exalt, and though she will be married and forced to breed the next heirs to the Shadow Blades’ legacy, it will be well worth it to keep Cherche alive. The other woman turns her head, as if she can sense that Maribelle is watching her. Figures approach the dunes now, guiding a magnificent black wyvern. Minerva. Maribelle is glad to see that the guards haven’t hurt the creature—Cherche would never forgive her if she’d allowed anything to happen to her precious Minerva.

“The duchess has asked to spare you in exchange for her obedience,” says the Exalt, his voice carrying over the silence of the sands. “You will mount your wyvern and you will fly far, far from here. You will never see the duchess again, under punishment of death should you accept to seek her out. Under these conditions, do you accept your freedom?”

“Not if it means forfeiting hers.”

“Then you will die, and she will obey regardless.”

“You would force her to bear children? To become a breeder for a league of swords whose arms you will never command?” Cherche’s voice carries well in the dawn silence, and Maribelle would call out for her were she not afraid to doom her. A hand cracks against Cherche’s cheek, and Maribelle’s knuckles go white against the banister. “I will find a way back to her, Your Excellency, you cannot stop me.”

Maribelle’s heart soars with pride as her love mounts the black wyvern, the dark rose of her hair a pennant behind her head as Minerva takes to the sky. Minerva circles the sky above the hill, body angled toward the palace, and then Maribelle hears her lover’s voice, proud and strong, accented by the wingbeats of the wyvern beneath her. She hears her lover call to her, and then—

Cherche meets her eyes, and then—

The guards raise the bows she hadn’t seen, and then—

 

She’ll be married tomorrow, despoiled tomorrow, subjected to a life of misery tomorrow.

Used as a breeder.

Used like a whore.

Used by a man she could never love the way she loves the falling knight.

 

Unless—

__Unless—_ _

UNLESS—

 

Maribelle flies from the the banister, not sure if she’d fallen or if she’d thrown herself off. Regardless here she is, racing to the ground below as the magic courses through her veins. Perhaps she’ll meet the earth when Cherche does. Perhaps they’ll meet each other again. She’d promised to find her.

 

She’s going to find her.

 

They will be free together, one day, she and her lady knight.

**Author's Note:**

> Annnnd that's that. Follow me [ on Tumblr ](http://lazywritergirl.tumblr.com) if you are so inclined! I update on my life and my writing...sometimes. Honestly most of the time it's just a loooot of random reblogs from all the cool people I follow.


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